If you've visited my site lately, you may have noticed a new entry on the left-hand menu. It's called "Tumblr" and it links to a web page with my latest ten Tumblr posts.

In case you haven't come across Tumblr before, it's a microblogging site, but it's quite different to that most well-known microblogging service, Twitter. With Tumblr, you can quickly and easily grab interesting things off the internet - web pages, photos, videos, quotes, blog posts, etc. - and display them on Tumblr with a comment of your own. The Tumblr post retains a link back to the source of whatever you grab. You can also write blog posts directly to Tumblr or send RSS feeds to it.

I'd wondered for a long time about whether to use Tumblr. I try not to sign up to every cool web tool or service going around, so I needed a reason to join...

One day I was wandering through some of my favourite crafty sites, and I was wondering how I could capture all the interesting projects, patterns, blog posts and ideas that I see on my online travels. I'd bookmark or favourite sites or pages in my internet browser or Google Reader, and print or save pages or photos - but then I couldn't always find (or remember!) all the great ideas for new projects that I had!

It occurred to me that I could use Tumblr as a visual bookmarking tool! When I come across something that looks interesting - maybe instructions for a craft project, or a visual inspiration for something I'd like to try - I use the Tumblr bookmarklet to capture an image from the web page and send it to my Tumblr account. The result is a stream of pictures with links back to the original web pages. Voila! Visual bookmarking :)

To be totally honest, Tumblr could be a bit more user-friendly, especially with respects to the social networking aspects. Navigation is also a bit unwieldy. But for the most part it suits my purposes just fine.

Anyway, you're welcome to check out my Tumblr - you can even subscibe to an RSS feed if you like. I won't be posting any of my own crafty creations there (you can find those on my Flickr), but maybe if you're of the crafty persuasion you might find some inspiration there yourself :)

P.S. Many thanks to my friend Jenelle for first introducing me to Tumblr through her own use of it :)